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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22443022">Gumo the Coward</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cobalt_Sun/pseuds/Cobalt_Sun'>Cobalt_Sun</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ori and the Blind Forest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fear, Gen, Gumo is very guilty, Major Character Injury, Naru is the Best Mom, Nightmares, Ori Is A Sweetheart, Ori is a little traumatized, Self-Hatred, Short One Shot, and skittish, i like problematic sadbois and it shows, sorry - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:28:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22443022</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cobalt_Sun/pseuds/Cobalt_Sun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gumo never told Naru about how he and Ori met. It wasn't something that ever came up, and he tried to avoid it for as long as he could.<br/>It comes back to bite him. Hard.<br/>...<br/>He had always been a despicable coward...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gumo/Naru if you squint</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Gumo the Coward</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I love this game and I always seem to gravitate towards Gumo's sort of character archetype. Also, I am made of angst. That's all I ever write. Angst Time! Get ready for Gumo being forced to deal with his short-term past and its implications WOOOOOO</p>
<p>Also, I wrote this with the game's lack of direct dialogue type storytelling in mind; narrated dialogue (except for sein and the spirit tree.) You'll see what i mean.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The family he had found was more than Gumo could ever ask for, and more than he deserved. Ori had told him that he earned his place there, but he disagreed; he had helped them, yes, and he had used his dead species’ last, most treasured artifact to revive Naru, but that wasn’t enough, not to Gumo. He had tried to kill Ori. He never reiterated this fact, glad they had let him off the hook so easily. He saw his actions as leveling out just to neutral grounds, or something like that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is his reasoning for being so afraid of Naru finding out about his initial… murderous intent. She didn’t know, of course, he had never told her, and neither had Ori. It just never came up, somehow, some spirit-blessed way, in the three weeks they had lived together after. He was pretty sure Ori thought that he had already told Naru about how he had stolen the Water Vein and led her child into his villainous </span>
  <em>
    <span>lair</span>
  </em>
  <span> full of deadly traps that he had used to try to kill or injure them. No, he hadn’t told her, and he didn’t want to. He was a coward. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because what would happen if she knew? She wouldn’t forgive him. She loved Ori so much, more than her own life, that much was clear. He couldn’t be alone again, not after last time, not after being the last one- they invited him in and kept him, this indescribably beautiful, merciful family, he couldn’t lose this second chance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He was selfish, he had tried to kill the child. Who would try to kill a child? A child trying to save their world? He didn’t know what he was thinking. He thought having the Water Vein would fill something. In a way, he was right, he supposed. He wished things had started differently between them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Ori had had many nightmares in the weeks in the aftermath of their adventure. They were a happy child still, but Kuro’s siege had took its toll on them. Their sudden tears, their fright at shadows of birds in the sky, it made Gumo’s heart ache, the poor, innocent child. But they had their mother and they had a friend in him, even if they missed the eye of the spirit tree, and he hoped it made their terrors more bearable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     But for the first time, on a night that mist blanketed the ground and the air was damp and muggy with rain from the afternoon before, Ori had a nightmare about </span>
  <em>
    <span>him.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Gumo found out just a little too late to do anything about it. Though what would he do? Restrain the child, keep them quiet like the selfish, greedy monster he was? He had been sleeping on his makeshift bedding, and Ori’s cries had woken him. He rolled and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and came to his senses to the scene of Ori crying in their mother’s lap. Hiccuping between words, they recounted their dream as their mother soothed them. Gumo stood and begun to approach to comfort and listen to them, just as he had done almost every night these weeks past, he crept around the egg, and then stopped cold. The words they were saying, they were about </span>
  <em>
    <span>Gumo, traps, fear, being caught, falling down, hurting, spikes, the monster that burrowed through the ground, and his </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>snaggletoothed smile, gleeful and cruel</em>
  </b>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Naru sighed and stroked her child, reassuring them that none of it was real. Gumo couldn't breathe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Ori looked confused, so much so that they stopped crying to turn their face up to look at their mother’s. They tell them, no, it was real, Gumo tried to hurt them. Didn’t he tell you. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Gumo took a shaky step backwards, clumsy enough to rustle the hay of the nest around the egg, and both sets of eyes turn towards him. He stood frozen, cold dread akin to death blooming in him. Ori’s eyes were confused, betrayed, he even looked </span>
  <em>
    <span>scared of him</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but Naru’s eyes were the ones that speared him through the heart, how could he be so </span>
  <em>
    <span>selfish-</span>
  </em>
  <span> they were wide, angry, furious and cold, no warmth, none, he was going to be sick, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>ruined</span>
  </em>
  <span> it- She could see it all, out in the open, it was so </span>
  <em>
    <span>ugly, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he was</span>
  <em>
    <span> murderous, dangerous, untrustworthy-</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>     Then she set Ori on the seat beside of her and stood up.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     She was going to fight him. She was going to exile him, never to bother with him again, she was going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>kill him</span>
  </em>
  <span>, she walked towards him with such force and anger, he had never seen that from her before. He snapped back to reality. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>     She was coming for him.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He rolled backwards nimbly before she could take two steps. He sprung towards the ceiling and crawled through the opening through which he had often stargazed with Ori. Into the cold fog he ran, his happiness a lie, his only family’s hatred pulverizing him from the inside out. He heard them shouting behind him, pursuing, but he was always faster, and he kept fleeing. He ruined it, ruined it, </span>
  <em>
    <span>ruined it.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He was crying so hard.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>     As the hours crept into the early morning, the sun peeked its head over the horizon and drenched the world in the surreal, blue light of dawn. The fog was soaked in it, the ground covered in half-formed bronze clouds. Gumo awoke for the second time that night, but this time with an aching pain in his head and ankle. He rubbed his faced, trying deliriously to soothe the pain, and his legs tried to curl in on himself to form a tighter ball. But instead they tugged, one of his feet were tightly hooked, it sent a jolt of pain up his leg, and his awareness heightened. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Trapped. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He blinked at his surroundings, vision clearing, and found his ankle wrapped tightly in-between a tree root, his head in severe pain, and no memory of how it happened. This alarmed him for several reasons.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He reasoned, shamefully, that he must have tripped, between the fog and his pathetic tears. How his ankle became this twisted and tied he had no idea. Secondly, when he fell, he must have hit his head on the large rock below him, and it was angled and jagged. He hoped he wasn’t bleeding. He didn’t have the nerve to check. Thankfully, the only loss of memory he had was his dash through the woods. He still remembered the night… the nightmare… the accusing look… the chase… </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He was beginning to wish he </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> knocked his memories out of his skull.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     On the other hand, now he was lost.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Well, even if he knew the way back, he couldn’t move anyway. And he wouldn’t want to go. He wouldn’t. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     So he sat there. Waiting for nothing. He did try to free his ankle, yes, but the pain from tugging was so severe that he feared he would be sick on the ground beside him, and it’s not that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>stopped,</span>
  </em>
  <span> it’s that he simply couldn’t continue. His head ached unbearably as the world became more bright, and he began hoping for some rescue to his pathetic predicament. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He heard familiar calls echoing through the woods, and he completely rescinded that wish.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He didn’t want to face them. He betrayed them. He could no longer be one of them, the best he could ever do now is watch from a distance again, as he had done not so long ago. He wouldn’t- couldn’t- </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     But fate had other plans for Gumo, and, out of all the places they could have gone, the searching mother-and-child pair came closer to him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He could see their silhouette in the woods around him now. His breathing quickened and his heart started pounding, doing no favors for the ache inside his head. He didn’t have a solid idea of what they would do to him if they found him, but his fear-crazed mind told him it would be horrible, painful, physically and mentally. He was so frightened, he would rather wither away here than-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Naru stepped into the sun, Ori on her back. They were looking straight at him, expressions unreadable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     And all Gumo could think to do was to </span>
  <em>
    <span>get away.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Gumo immediately began struggling backwards, but his ankle yanked against the root, pulling it out of place. He screamed in pain behind his fearfully bared teeth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Naru made a sound and came towards him, Ori jumping off her back and advancing on their own, quicker. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He couldn’t think rationally. Too many feelings, too little air.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He told them to go away, yelling, crying.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     They wouldn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He told them that he would hurt them if they didn’t. He didn’t want to, he really didn’t, but he knew he could, and that meant that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>would.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Eventually, he would, no matter what he tried.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Ori hid behind their mother. Naru’s eyes widened.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>     He had scared them. Again, he had scared the child.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     That’s what made Gumo sob. Head in his hands, he whimpered pathetically that he was sorry beyond belief. He whispered that they should leave him. It would be better than him hurting anyone else. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He was selfish, and he wasn’t worth the effort. That’s what he told them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>    They came closer still. Their faces morphed into something he couldn’t make out through the tears. The gap between them was closed, and Naru had her hands on him.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He turned his head away, gasping and convinced that she would beat him like the villain he was. He flinched sharply at the next movement, and Naru almost drew away. But her hands instead shifted to the root at his ankle. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     With a yank, the root was uprooted and he was free. But before he could think about running, Naru had picked him up. His ankle was jostled, causing him to moan in pain, struggling weakly. But her hold was soft.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     She told him that she forgave him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>    He bawled his eyes out, telling her that she shouldn’t. He didn’t deserve forgiveness, not from </span>
  <em>
    <span>her,</span>
  </em>
  <span> whose child he almost killed. He didn’t deserve to be part of their family, even though he wanted to; he didn’t want Ori to hurt anymore. It would be better if he just left, he insisted through tears as Naru carried him home- </span>
  <em>
    <span>her home, their home. Not yours.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     A little hand on his knee. Ori was on Naru’s arm, looking at him, and he couldn’t bear to meet their gaze. Their little voice told them that this was familiar. Like when they saved him before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Silence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Ori asked him why he didn’t tell Naru about how they had met.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Slowly, shakily, he told them as honestly as he could. He didn’t want her to hate him. He foolishly hoped the topic wouldn’t come up at all, because he just couldn’t bear the thought of confrontation. But most of all, he was scared. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He knew that made him selfish, but he was too scared to lose everything again. He had no one, then he found a family. He couldn’t lose them, even though he knew he shouldn’t have them in the first place. Because he was evil. Evil </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> a coward.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     A second hug, this one completely on top of him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Don’t say those things, they said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>      I forgave you for what you did to me, they said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Please forgive yourself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Gumo couldn’t reply.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He couldn’t fathom how anyone could be so merciful. So kind. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     But their one, simple request.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     Breaking down again, he hugged them back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     He told Ori he would try.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>     The return home was quiet, and Gumo nearly fell asleep in Naru’s arms. When they returned, mother and child wrapped the wayward gumon in a blanket and set him down to rest. Naru wiped his head with a wet cloth, and left it on his swelling ankle. There would be time to check it later.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>      But now, they knelt in front of him and assured him that they would not leave him alone. He was family. And, forgiven or not, that wouldn’t change. They promised and they held him; it was enough to make him cry again. He apologized once more for making such a big deal over this, when it was Ori who should be comforted, not him; not the instigator. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     And you know what they told him?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     ‘We want to help you, too.’</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     ‘It’s okay to need help.’</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     And what knocked his brain into a blissful stupor,</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>     ‘We love you.’</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>      He loved them too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>      He would tell them every day for the rest of his life.</span>
</p>
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